Thu, 19/04/2012 - 13:51 | 
webupd8.org
Rosa Media Player (ROMP) is a media player forked from SMplayer, used by default in ROSA Desktop, a Linux distribution based on Mandriva that comes with some special features. Besides being able to play almost any audio/video formats (it uses Mplayer), Rosa Media Player can also extract audio from videos, trim videos or record the desktop.
Unfortunately, the desktop capture feature doesn't work properly in Unity because Rosa Media Player is minimized to the tray when the recording starts and you need to click its tray icon to stop the recording which is not possible in Unity, where all Qt applications tray icons are converted to appindicators (unless you uninstall the sni-qt package), which don't support actions on click.
To trim a video or extract audio from a video, click the green arrow on the right - this will open a sidebar where you'll find the "Trim video" and "Extract audio track" options in a drop-down:
Mon, 26/03/2012 - 13:46 | webupd8.org
XBMC Media Center is a free and open source (GPL) digital media hub and HTPC (Home theater PC) software, available for Linux, OSX, iOS and Windows.
XBMC 11 "Eden" has been released recently and comes with speed increases, better and simpler library, better unencrypted BluRay support, default skin improvements, better networking support, AirPlay support, upgraded weather service with geoip lookup and much more. The new version also brings support for Apple TV2 and iOS.
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Tags: ios, Linux, macosx, Media Center, music player, ubuntu, video player, windows, xbmc
Wed, 07/03/2012 - 11:07 | webupd8.org
Audience is a new media player written in Vala that "brings the lessons learned from the web home to the desktop".
The application uses a slick, clutter-based user interface and is designed to play videos without getting in your way, with controls displayed in a semi-transparent overlay that uses autohide and a seek bar that shows a thumbnail preview for a given mark in the video, eliminating the need to manually seek to see what happens at a certain point in the video. For the menu, Audience uses an elementary-style AppMenu instead of a classic menu bar:
Tue, 31/01/2012 - 12:57 | webupd8.org
SMPlayer may have been dead for a while, but it seems very active now, with two releases in just one month. The latest SMPlayer 0.7.0 brings basic support for YouTube and MPlayer2 as well as other new features.
- Mplayer2 support
- Use precise seeking with mplayer2. It can be enabled/disabled from Preferences > Interface
- Basic support for YouTube which allows you to open urls via Open > Url, or as a command line parameter. You can also drag and drop a link from a browser to the smplayer window.
- You can select the desired quality for YouTube videos under Preferences > Performance
- New favorite menu, where you can add your favorite videos, music, streams, etc. It's also possible to add submenus.
- New command line option: -disable-server which is used to disable the server used to communicate with other instances. You can use this to launch multiple SMPlayer instances
Thu, 05/01/2012 - 16:32 | webupd8.org
MPlayer2 is a fork of MPlayer that "contains significant further development and supports a number of features not available in other Unix players".
Improvements included in MPlayer2 that aren't available in the original MPlayer:
- better pause handling (In MPlayer executing any commands forced the player to unpause; in MPlayer2 you can change settings, seek, or run other commands while paused)
- better Matroska support, including support for ordered chapters and editions
- It's easy to build MPlayer2 with FFmpeg-mt support which gives a big performance increase on multicore machines
- better support for VDPAU functionality on NVIDIA cards
- support for precise seeking (seek to any frame in the video)
- support for gettext-based translations
- no longer depends on embedded FFmpeg tree or internal FFmpeg symbols
- improvements in audio/video sync handling
- support for gapless playback of audio files
- support modifier keys in command bindinds
- OSS4 volume control
- lots of bug fixes
You can read a complete comparison between MPlayer and MPlayer2, here.
Tue, 03/01/2012 - 17:18 | webupd8.org
SMPlayer is a popular front-end for MPlayer and can play videos, DVDs and VCDs, featuring configurable subtitles, audio track switching, video equalizer, filters, playlist, aAudio and subtitles delay adjustment and much more.
After almost 2 years, a new SMPlayer version has been released: 0.6.10. The new version only brings some minor new features like:
- New vdpau configuration dialog
- New menu to select the closed caption channel (requires mplayer >= r32607)
- Possibility to select the seeking method (absolute or relative)
- Possibility to sort the items of the playlist
- Port for eCS, OS/2
SMPlayer could already use VDPAU (VDPAU allows video programs to offload portions of the video decoding process and video post-processing to the GPU video-hardware - Nvidia graphics cards only), but the new VDPAU configuration dialog lets you select the vdpau codecs to use:
Install SMPlayer 0.6.10 in Ubuntu
Fri, 18/11/2011 - 15:59 | webupd8.org
Xt7-Player is a graphical user interface for Mplayer with a huge list of features, "while trying to keep usability in mind". Among the most important features are YouTube and Shoutcast integration, dvbt, library and playlist management, local and global hotkeys, "stackable" Audio and video filters managed via drag'n drop, audio and video equalizers and lots more.
It can even watch your /tmp folder for Flash videos and play them (like a tweak we've posted a while back, but fully automated).
Mon, 27/06/2011 - 15:59 | webupd8.org
UMPlayer is a new cross-platform Mplayer front-end that supports CSS skins, easily searching, watching and downloading YouTube videos, lots of ShoutCast radio stations and more.
A quick update: UMPlayer has been available in the main WebUpd8 PPA for a while now but I've decided to create an UMPlayer-only PPA for those who do not want to upgrade all the packages available in the main WebUpd8 PPA.
There's also a new UMPlayer version available (both in the new stand-alone UMPplayer PPA and the main WebUpd8 PPA) which comes with lots of bug fixes. There's no changelog available, but you can take a look at the SVN log if you want to see what's new.
Fri, 10/06/2011 - 15:30 | webupd8.org
I'm sure many of you know about GetDeb but maybe some of our new readers don't. GetDeb is a very popular (for example, in July 2010, there were about 25144 unique Ubuntu Lucid users per day installing packages via) software portal that comes with an Ubuntu repository which you can use to install applications that are not available in the official Ubuntu repositories - this includes updated versions for various applications.
Until now I didn't really needed to use GetDeb in Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal, but the Pidgin PPA hasn't been updated yet with the latest Pidgin 2.8.0 (released about 3 days ago) so I though I'd check GetDeb - and indeed, GetDeb provides the latest Pidgin 2.8.0 (for Ubuntu Natty and Lucid - no Maverick it seems) as well as VLC 1.1.10 (for Natty only).
Fri, 27/05/2011 - 09:51 | webupd8.org
Miro is an open source music / video player and converter that features an integrated BitTorrent client, podcast support and many other interesting features. It runs on Linux, Windows and Mac.
Miro 4 was released a few days ago, getting some major new features like Android sync (with makes use of the media file conversion that was already built in Miro), Amazon Mp3 Store and Android store support, Ubuntu AppIndicator, share files with other computers that use Miro in your local network and well, there's a huge list so check it out here.
Install Miro 4 in Ubuntu 11.04, 10.10 and 10.04
Add new comment | Tags: bittorrent, Linux, macosx, Miro, music player, ubuntu, video player, windows
